


I Recognise You

by amoama



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 22:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13327548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: Miranda is still watching over Thomas and James.





	I Recognise You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [libraralien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraralien/gifts).



It feels now, looking over it all, that it has only been in moments, dreams, that I have felt such things as home, or peace, or completeness. Perhaps that is more than most. More than you, Thomas? More than James? You both, at times, have given me all of those things. And I pray only that I returned them to you while I still could and that you will find them again. 

You remember how I told you I was alone as a child? Trapped in such a formal household; with rules and etiquette and unbreakable silences. My world was small, my days structured and repetitive, my outlook restricted. 

Eventually I understood I was being groomed to assist my parents in their social ascension. I was their perfect tool though they rarely wielded the instruments that shaped me directly. No wonder then that I grew strongest in those places most easily hidden; in my soul and my imagination. They controlled my outer world and all my rebellion was held inside. 

I was never hungry, never dirty, never injured. 

I was never warm, never comfortable, never touched. 

I was never loved, not until you. 

 

My Thomas, my fierce, dedicated, dreamer. You were my first freedom. You, who sought to explore my inner world with me, who wished to widen it. I fled to you, as to a refuge, and you made me secure. I watch over you now, as I always sought to when we were together. 

You had known shame already, or rather the outward infliction of it, caught compromised and punished at the hands of your father and you told me of it in a voice laced with fear beyond my bearing. Oh my husband, I was so angry then; and that rage was resurrected so furiously at our parting. I wanted desperately to spare you that. 

We were trapped together in that civilised, decorous, society. Only now, far removed, can I call it a hell. We dreamed of remaking it because we could not see ourselves outside of it. Perhaps that was our error. We should have fled from the first, not waited to try and fail. 

We parted, for a little while there, oh my soul. What I believed was forever was a speck in the infinity in which I now swim. 

We promised to have no secrets and we never did. From our depths we cried out to one another, listened carefully, and found through our differences that we could hold ourselves in tune.

 

There were others, before him, I suppose, though I could not name them now, so faded are they in importance to our story. A clerk I think, and our painter, I remember. They helped open us up to each other, ready ourselves for him. 

Oh, he was handsome, our James. Simultaneously, our breath stopped, when we first noticed the freckles dusting his hands, as he lifted his fork to eat, at that first shared dinner. You smiled at me and I lowered my head to laugh silently, as was proper with company present. I was taught all the rules, so thoroughly. I knew then what we both hoped would come to be. 

Although he was quiet at first, I think we both knew, from the start, he was merely a resting volcano. He was our biggest gamble; but we needed him. We would never have contemplated resisting those feelings. I shepherded him towards you, seeing how you watched him, hearing how you spoke of him, tracing the warmth in your voice as you greeted him. I shivered to hear it and I opened the door. 

 

Just once were we three. 

It is a memory I store at the core of my being. I soak in it, even now. In the sharpness of your absence, in those long Nassau years, I would draw it out to the surface, suffuse my nerves and bloodstream with remembrances and shiver tip to toe with the wealth contained in that one reminiscence. My rapture, outside myself. 

I came to you, one morning, early. Intercepting the breakfast tray because I knew James was still with you. I had planned to come, at some point soon, but had not yet decided when. I went with fate and knocked gently, balancing the breakfast. You knew it was me because when I entered you had a hand gently upon James’s shoulder, reassuring him. 

Both of you looked up at me with such trust I could not help but smile down at you. I sat on your bed with my offerings and you both fell on them gratefully, melted butter slipping down the bun onto James’s fingers. I was familiar with him too and could not help from drawing them to my lips when he was done, to lick him clean. 

“Come,” you said, when you had eaten, “join us,” and that was all. 

I unlaced myself, disrobed, and naked, lay gently between you. 

You took such care of me. You showed me, both of you, how you loved me. 

 

How differently you touched me. You, with care, with appreciation, friendship, utmost sympathy and trust. James, with a keener, more amorous, touch, less of our nuance. You entered me first and he kissed me, fierce and grateful, and then he turned to you, buried his head against your back, urged you on. Eventually he took over, pushing into me greedily. You lay beside me, pillowing my head, stroking my hair, both of us looking up at James. It was one of those moments, those gifts of time and self-knowledge, where I was completely myself and then, immediately, beyond myself with emotion and physical joy. 

I came back to earth in your arms and in his. We lay at peace for a small portion of morning, in sunlight. As if the world intended to smile upon us. 

 

I left James, willing him to the care of a new partner, a boy called Silver - as wilful as him, as determined as you, as sly, perhaps, as me, hiding his nature from the world. James responds to him and so I trust that he has truth at his core. Silver has our James’s safekeeping for now and I have returned to you where I will always be most myself. 

I realise, at once, of course, that you are waiting. That your faith is as strong as ever. If I still could, I would weep and rail that James and I got so lost, that I led him so far from you, from your rescue. In the moment of our sundering, I felt the walls come down. The loneliness of my stark childhood returned to me and I did not know how to fight it without you. Later, yes, I fought, but always with the belief that it was all too late. 

James, I watched, I baited, I drew on his strengths and his weaknesses. I wandered down so many angry, maddening paths. Until, in the mist rising from the sea, I heard your voice once more, felt your presence, and I left James to Silver and returned to you. 

I wait with you. Of course I do. We are not in need of anything outside of your meagre existence. You rise with the sun. You eat a little. You head out into the fields. The sun stays with you all day. Your back aches, your skin burns. There is nothing at all like London here. Nothing at all like Bethlem. Your body grows stronger, gains colour and muscle. You are readying yourself, my faithful one, my all-time love. Incorporeal as I am, I am full of longing for the day of reconcilement. 

 

Eventually, he comes. 

He is weighed down, spiritually, bruised right to the bone, but I feel our long-twinned hearts lift regardless. Our James. You take him in your arms and bless him, over and over. You give it as love, as delight, surpassing happiness, but he feels it as forgiveness, as healing, as recognition. 

It will have been hard for him to come before you now, like this - a man who committed so much horror in your name, who played the monster so well he wondered if the monster had devoured him. As long as he wondered that, I knew him safe. He worries, how will you find him in the darkness, when he can barely find himself? 

His fears light your path. 

You haven’t heard of Captain Flint. You barely know what year it is, or what country this is that you are shipwrecked upon. This is your first glimpse of him and all you see is James, your James, our James. Just like he sees you, my Thomas, with the years wiped away. 

I mourn for those men you used to be, so close to fading from existence, so many layers on top that cannot now be peeled away. You are both worn down, both enriched, you are full stories and troubles and friends who have fed your souls in the intervening years. 

You must tell each other those stories, slowly, with time. 

For now, you kiss. A Bedlamite and a pirate, my two honest souls. There is both chaos and peace in the touching of your lips. You feel his cracked skin and register change for the first time. You feel it as a miracle. All his differences are small heartbreaks waiting for you, but they are all his and he is here for you to feel, to chart his body, to hold against your heart. 

 

In your lonely cell in Bethlem you knew worse than I ever did in my childhood years but still the knowledge of what I had survived sustained you. Your strength was ever inward. Your generosity was tested relentlessly, thinking of us out there somewhere, free. You were buried so deeply you could hardly breathe. 

We tore apart the world for you, our tempest raged and raged without end. James flooded the world and razed the earth with molten rock. You were lost to us but never forgotten. 

 

Together in your small hut his kisses throw you off balance. Later, he will wonder why you have remained here; he will ask you what your plan is? You will be surprised to find you have one, the start of one. It has been so long since you were the kind of man to have a goal. You will be relieved that he too wishes to live quietly. He says he would like to try staying on land for once and you laugh, and I do too, in harmony with you, because we have only known him a man of the sea. But he means it, most earnestly. 

You strip him of his pirate garb, coming slowly to the essentials of him. He is heavier, scarred so badly in places it is close to mutilation. His gorgeous flaming hair is gone, but his knuckles, his cheeks, his collar bone are all still dusted with a profusion of freckles. Our James. You kiss them reverently. 

I watch you come together. You pour yourself over him. Always he unleashed in you a sensuousness that befits your lean, gentle beauty. The innocence of your eyes, the calmness of your spirit washes over him. I sigh in pleasure to see it. There is no hesitation in his response to you, at last, no element of shame in his desire. He seeks out your mouth, your tongue, desperate for your touch. I share that longing. 

His hands are rough against your skin, which I would resent, except that your body shudders and flexes with satisfaction as a result. You open to him. He consumes you; leaning over you on the bed, pushing in deep, holding you down. I watch how his muscles work, how you hold him to you. I see how he wishes this joining could last, how he longs to take root in you. 

He has already, he must know that. I know it. 

 

I curl myself down next to you on the bed. You can feel my presence I think. You experience instant after instant of hot, flashing, pleasure. I know, I remember, how that feels. I cover you with my kisses. Be happy, oh my sweet, my love, be happy. I brush your hair so gently. I am the breeze around you. You cry out for him, his name, and more, unintelligible, but I catch all your sounds. 

“Yes,” I whisper, “he’s here, he’s here with you. My love, he’s here.” 

For a second you look straight at me, caught on a moment of pure bliss, surprise at the extent of your pleasure clear in your eyes. Never had you thought to feel this again, never had you thought to see me. Your lips form the words, “thank you”, full of the love and kindness I have missed so badly. It’s brief, oh so momentary. I never get more than an instant. But it’s there and I am so overwhelmingly grateful. 

You reach for James, pull him down to kiss him. I catch a strain of his pleasure, a hit so strong that it lights a fire all through me, I burn bright. I think perhaps he senses me too. He says my name against your lips, “Miranda,” like a summons. You nod, “yes, yes,” you say, “James.” It’s a plea. He answers it, moving powerfully within you, calling forth your climax. He says your name, “Thomas,” before he pours himself into you. Ever have you been his refuge. I hover between you, where the air is thick with reclamation and old promises renewed. I am dissolved within it. I am yours and his and mine, complete. 

I am gone, but I am here. I am waiting.


End file.
